A spankin’ new ad for Beatles Rock Band features the Fab Four alive and well, loitering with fans on Abbey Road. There’s even an almost-convincingly-cut scene of George Harrison strumming alongside a kid with a Rock Band guitar.
The frothy setting — utterly devoid of the angst that made them not-a-band-anymore — melts into animated versions of the Beatles themselves, beating their instruments over the coloured Rock Band bars that tell you what string to hit. Song featured in the ad is Come Together off their Abbey Road album.
No strong feelings of disdain here; it’s certainly a lot less callous than that one time Saatchi used All You Need is Love to sell diapers or the time Ben & Jerry’s distilled the spirit of John Lennon in a hippie ice cream.
Oddly — and we might change our minds about this later — the ad made the notion of bringing the Beatles back as an animated pleasure-band a lot less traumatizing than watching a stilted cartoon Kurt Cobain play marionette for Guitar Hero. It’s cheesy, sure, but it could have been a trainwreck.
Identity of the agency behind the ad remains a mystery for now. Word has it there’ll be a reveal after the game comes out. Anyway, whoever you are, nice job; we’d be liars if we said the work lacked charm.
